Week Ending 03/28/09

This week was an awesome week!! We did spend quite a bit on groceries but it was for 2 weeks worth (at least) so it will even itself out.

Total for the week

Shelf Price $383.00
Price Paid $121.00
Amount Saved $262.00

That is a savings of 68% WOO HOO!!!

It would have been an even bigger savings had we not bought a lot of meat. I didn't pay full price for any of the meat, it was all 1/2 off. The chicken was actually buy 1 get 2 free, which comes to about $1.83 per lb of boneless skinless. We bought enough for at least 3 weeks, plus we still have about 20 lbs of meat in the deep freeze.

I can only think of 1 thing I will need from the store and that's sugar. I haven't even looked to see if it's on sale somewhere.

Busy as a bee

Whew... yesterday was a very busy day for me. We were planning on going up to Harris Teeter last night to get most of our grocery shopping done since it's triple coupons this week. I had to get dinner done early. I started it at about 1 pm. Spaghetti with meat sauce. Yum. Made a double batch so I can freeze the extra and I made a batch of bread.

Christian begged me to put the ground flax seed in there like I have done before so of course I did. The bread was glorious again. I made this loaf bigger so it could be used for sandwiches for lunch today.

We did really good at HT last night. It was quiet in there which is always good, but they were out of about 20 things I had on my list. Caitlin and I will go back tomorrow when the new coupons come out.

All in all we spent $107 for $277 worth of groceries. Not too shabby. I'll post this week's totals tonight.

I love bread

I love it! Love love love bread. It loves me back. Seriously. It told me.

I just made the most delicious bread EVER. And I have made lots of bread. I saw the recipe on another blog and had to try it. I made a few adjustments and it worked perfectly.

6.5 cups of flour
3 cups of warm water
1.5 tbs of yeast
1 tbs table salt (the recipe called for kosher but I am out)
approx. 1.5 tbs sugar (My own addition, and would be awesome with honey too!)

Mix the yeast, salt, sugar and water in a large bowl. Stir until dissolved. Add flour and stir. It's a very wet dough and hard to stir so I did knead it a couple of times just to get all the flour incorporated. Let dough rise until doubled.

I went ahead and greased 4 loaf pans. The original recipe says you can refrigerate and then just take off whatever amount you want to bake for the day or whatever. I just went ahead and planned on baking all of it today. What can I say.... I like to bend the rules. Tee hee.

Once the dough was doubled, I divided into 4 equal parts and turned the dough in my hands to form a smooth top. Remember, this is a NO knead bread but we want it to look pretty. I placed each section into the greased pans and let it double once more.

Preheat to 450 degrees and then bake for about 10 mins then lower the oven to 395 degrees and bake until done. They should be nice and golden brown on the top. I did brush on a little melted butter when the loaves had about 5 mins or so left to cook. Yummy...

I didn't do what the recipe called for when it came to the steam cooking method. I am not a fan of hard crusty bread. I like nice soft bread. This bread is a mix between the 2. The most amazing crispy crust and yummy moist bread on the inside.




I figured for 4 loaves of bread, it maybe, maybe cost around a buck. And I think that is a VERY liberal estimate.


I am making these to go with dinner tonight. Don't they sound yummy??

Don't buy stuff you CAN NOT afford...

Just saw this on another blog and literally laughed out loud.

I think I woke the kiddos.... and the neighbors dog...





It's as easy as that, yet so hard for us to understand.... at least some of us. I totally get it now.